Part 34

"I says, 'Mr. Loneway, sir,' I says, 'chuck it. Tell her the whole thing an' give 'em back what you got left, an' do your best.'

"He turned on me like a crazy man.

"'Don't talk to me like that,' he says fierce. 'You don't know what you're sayin',' he says. 'No man does till he has this happen to him. The judge on the bench that'll send me to jail for it, he won't know what he's judgin'. My God--my God!' he says, leanin' up against the door o' the furnace room, 'to see her sick like this--an' needin' things--when she give herself to me to take care of!'

"Course there wa'n't no talkin' to him. An' the nex' night an' the nex' he come home bringin' her truck just the same. Once he even hed her a bunch o' pinks. Seems though he was doin' the worst he could.

"The pinks come at the end of the second day of the three days the assistant cashier had give him to pay the money back in. An' two things happened that night. I was in the kitchen helpin' him wash up the dishes while the doctor was in the room with Mis' Loneway. An' when the doctor come out o' there into the kitchen, he shuts the door. I see right off somethin' was the matter. He took Mr. Loneway off to the back window, an' I rattled 'round with the dishes an' took on not to notice. Up until when the doctor goes out--an' then I felt Mr. Loneway's grip on my arm. I looked at him, an' I knew. She wasn't goin' to get well. He just lopped down on the chair like so much sawdust, an' put his face down in his arm, the way a schoolboy does--an' I swan he wa'n't much more'n a schoolboy, either. I s'pose if ever hell is in a man's heart,--an' we mostly all see it there sometime, even if we don't feel it,--why, there was hell in his then.

"All of a sudden there was a rap on the hall door. He never moved, an' so I went. I whistled, I rec'lect, so's she shouldn't suspect nothin' from our not goin' in where she was right off. An' a messenger-boy was out there in the passage with a letter for Mr. Loneway.

"I took it in to him. He turned himself around an' opened it, though I don't believe he knew half what he was doin'. An' what do you guess come tumblin' out o' that envelope? Fifty-four dollars in bills. Not a word with 'em.

"Then he broke down. 'It's Lovett,' he says, 'it's Lovett's done this--the assistant cashier. Maybe he's told some o' the other fellows at the desks next, an' they helped. They knew about her bein' sick. An' they can't none of 'em afford it,' he says, an' that seemed to cut him up worst of all. 'I'll give it back to him,' he says resolute. 'I can't take it from 'em, Peleg.'

"I says, 'Hush up, Mr. Loneway, sir,' I says. 'You got to think o' her. Take it,' I told him, 'an' thank God it ain't as bad as it was. Who knows,' I ask' him, 'but what the doctor might turn out wrong?'

"Pretty soon I got him to pull himself together some, an' I shoved him into the other room, an' I went with him, an' talked on like an idiot so nobody'd suspect--I didn't hev no idea what.

"She was settin' up in the same black waist, with a newspaper hung acrost the head o' the iron bed to keep the draught out. All of a sudden,--

"'John!' says she.

"He went close by the bed.

"'Is everything goin' on good?' she ask' him.

"'Everything,' he told her right off.

"'Splendid, John?' she ask' him, pullin' his hand up by her cheek.

"'Splendid, Linda,' he says after her.

"'We got a little money ahead?' she goes on.

"'Bless me, if he didn't do just what I had time to be afraid of. He hauls out them fifty-four dollars an' showed her.

"She claps her hands like a child.

"'Oh, goodey!' she says; 'I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Now I can tell you,' she says to him.

"He took her in his arms an' kneeled down by the bed, an' I tried to slip out, but she called me back. So I stayed, like an' axe in the parlour.

"'John,' she says to him, 'do you know what Aunt Nita told me before I was married? "You must always look the prettiest you know how," Aunt Nita says,' she tells him, '"for your husband. Because you must always be prettier for him than anybody else is." An', oh, dearest,' she says, 'you know I'd 'a' looked my best for you if I could--but I never had--an' it wasn't your fault!' she cries out, 'but things didn't go right. It wasn't anybody's fault. Only--I wanted to look nice for you. An' since I've been sick,' she says, 'it's made me wretched, wretched to think I didn't hev nothin' to put on but this black waist--this homely old black waist. You never liked me to wear black,' I rec'lect she says to him, 'an' it killed me to think--if anything should happen--you'd be rememberin' me like this. You think you'd remember me the way I was when I was well--but you wouldn't,' she says earnest; 'people never, never do. You'd remember me here like I look now. Oh--an' so I thought--if there was ever so little money we could spare--won't you get me somethin'--somethin' so's you could remember me better? Somethin' to wear these few days,' she says.

"He breaks down then an' cries, with his face in her pillow.

"'Don't--why, don't!' she says to him; 'if there wasn't any money, you might cry--only then I wouldn't never hev told you. But now--to-morrow--you can go an' buy me a little dressing-sacque--the kind they have in the windows on Broadway. Oh, Jack!' she says, 'is it wicked an' foolish for me to want you to remember me as nice as you can? It ain't--it ain't!' she says.

"Then I give out. I felt like a handful o' wet sawdust that's been squeezed. I slid out an' downstairs, an' I guess I chopped wood near all night. The Tomato Ketchup's husband he pounded the floor for me to shut up, an' I told him--though I never was what you might call a impudent janitor--that if he thought he could chop it up any more soft, he'd better engage in it. But then the kid woke up, too, an' yelled some, an' I's afraid she'd hear it an' remember, an' so I quit.

"Nex' mornin' I laid for Mr. Loneway in the hall.

"'Sir,' I says to him when he come down to go out, 'you won't do nothin' foolish?' I ask' him.